Tipperary's John McGrath has admitted there was an "element of shock" in how the second half of their All-Ireland final victory over Cork unfolded.
Liam Cahill's side - clear underdogs before the game and a long shot at the beginning of the campaign - outscored Cork 3-14 to 0-02 in a surreal second half to claim a first All-Ireland title in six years, just 14 months after they had finished bottom of the Munster SHC table.
McGrath himself was at the centre of the second-half blitz, scoring the first and third goals and being instrumental in the creation of the second, winning the penalty which saw Eoin Downey sent off before Darragh McCarthy buried it to open up an eight-point gap.
The Tipp full-forward, who this week collected the PwC GAA/GPA Hurler of the Month award for July, acknowledged there was an air of disbelief even among the winning team in the midst of the second half.
"It's hard to put your finger on. In all the permutations that you're thinking (about) in the weeks leading up, they definitely all cross your mind," McGrath told RTÉ Sport this week.
"But the manner in which we won it, I don't think anyone in their wildest dreams would have come up with that scenario.
"There certainly was an element of shock. I knew we were relatively well up but to actually see the final score, it was kinda hard to believe that that had just happened.
"Sport is funny like that. Everything just started to go right for us at a certain point of that second half. And the exact opposite for Cork at different stages - hitting the post, hitting the crossbar. Them little bits of luck are needed along the way.
"But our lads just absolutely powered into that last 35 minutes. To save the best 35 minutes of the year for that time in an All-Ireland final... It's the kind of thing that you hope is going to happen. But how often does that actually come to fruition? It's unreal from that point of view."
The prospect of a Tipp All-Ireland victory at any time in the near future seemed very remote at the start of the year.
Cahill had faced questions about whether he intended to remain on after a wretched 2024 campaign, in which Tipp were eliminated from the Munster SHC with a game left to play after a frightful hammering at the hands of Cork in Semple Stadium.
It was assumed they were deep in the weeds of a protracted rebuild. In that context, the 2025 success has been seen as one of the most abrupt and stunning turnarounds of modern times. Did the players believe they were realistic All-Ireland contenders at the beginning of 2025?
"It's always in the back of your mind," McGrath says. "You certainly have a belief somewhere in you or I don't think you'd ever get to a stage of winning anything.
"But mainly, we wanted to get competitive, first and foremost. Whatever comes from that, comes from it. We just needed to build ourselves back up.
"We were losing games by double digits. More than once. It was about getting back to being competitive.
"From that point of view, to where the year actually developed, it certainly is in some ways hard to believe. I'm living in Thurles and you're going down the town and the flags and colour are still up and in some ways, it feels like a bit of a dream. There's huge satisfaction.
"After the last couple of years, a lot of lads could easily have let the things slip by a little bit. But I think we had a good bit of pride in ourselves. You want to be competing. We weren't happy looking at everyone else competing for trophies over the last couple of years."
"We were losing games by double digits. More than once. It was about getting back to being competitive
In some sense, McGrath's own fortunes mirrored that of the team generally. He finishes 2025 as the joint-leading scorer from play in the championship and as one of the contenders for Hurler of the Year.
It's a far cry from much of the past three years. The Loughmore-Castleiney man ruptured his Achilles tendon in the 2022 Munster SHC defeat to Clare and the injury had dogged him in the interval.
Now three-time All-Ireland champion McGrath, who turned 31 last month, had been reduced to the status of a bit-part player in the 2024 season, with just two championship appearances as a late sub. However, his illustrious club exploits in both codes had nurtured belief at a time when it might have ebbed away.
Held in reserve for much of the league, it was the opening Munster SHC game against Limerick, in which he plundered two second-half goals in a rousing draw that proved a turning point.
"Even before I had the injury, it [my form] was up and down a little bit for a year or two. The club form was one of the huge things that kept me going. In the back of your mind, you know it's there.
"I saw very little league time. It's not as if I was tearing up trees at the time in training either. The lads [in the management team] took a small little bit of a chance on me coming into that Limerick game.
"They said 'we're putting you in, you've been there, you have that little bit of experience.'
"I probably put a lot of pressure on myself in that game. It was a sliding doors moment. I probably made it out to be a bigger game in my own head than it was. The couple of years before that had been on and off - and off more than on.
"At the stage in my Tipperary career that I was at, I kinda needed to do something to remind myself and others what I was capable of.
"Thank God, it kind of worked out for me that day. To be back stuck in it at that stage, it's something you don't want to let go of."
